Seth Harris

The growing use of big data and predictive analytics to help address human capital and other work-related issues brings great opportunities, but also meaningful risks. Big data can help employers recruit the best qualified job applicants, improve the match between jobs and prospective employees, and reform work processes and workplace rules to maximize productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee retention. Big data promises that employees’ workplaces will be governed by merit and driven by data, not supervisors’ biases and outmoded notions about which job qualifications matter most. However, big data and predictive analytics can also raise grave concerns about workplace privacy, exploitation of workers and legal liability. Based on decades of experience addressing labor and employment issues as a teacher, scholar, lawyer and policymaker at the highest levels of the U.S. government, Seth Harris surveys the new and growing practice of people analytics and proposes a simple principle for using big data in the workplace: employers must be values-driven as well as data-driven. Harris helps audiences to understand that keeping the people in people analytics is the surest path to success.